It is a day of awareness and recognition of cultural diversity and a commitment to educate with integrity and respect. Culinary, customs, music or crafts were the protagonists.
The Hope Center of the Prelature of Lábrea and the Augustinian Recollects in the Brazilian town of Pauini (Amazonas) is a day center for children and adolescents who, alternatively to their school schedule, receive a program of comprehensive education that includes school and nutritional support and learning workshops (music, crafts, cooking, computing, among others).
The Center promotes values of citizenship, social construction, and defense of the dignity and rights of people. Therefore, some of the highlights of the calendar in which these values are promoted, are highly valued accounts.
On April 19, Indigenous Peoples’ Day was celebrated around the world, and the Hope Center did not want to miss this opportunity in a region where coexistence with these peoples has not historically been peaceful or respectful.
In this Amazon region, the current population is mostly descendants of the levies of people who moved two or three generations ago from other parts of Brazil for the exploitation of rubber and other jungle products.
Until three decades ago, the coexistence of this population with indigenous peoples was especially tense and often even dramatic: the native inhabitants were a problem and a nuisance for those who only saw the jungle as an opportunity to get rich.
The worst thing is that those groups of workers went there in conditions of deep exploitation and lived in a regime of semi-slavery. Very few benefited and became rich. They did it at the cost of the suffering of the indigenous people and those displaced workers, who also lived in conflict each other.
This system has had consequences that last to this day. It is not uncommon to perceive still in the conversations and attitudes contempt and discrimination towards the native peoples.
The students of Hope Center received local representatives of the native peoples. Divided into groups, they established friendly contact with students through workshops on food, rituals, language, music, history, crafts, and storytelling with traditional legends.
There was also a debate about their way of life, how close she is to the jungle and the water, and how the degradation of nature implies the loss of their style and way of life, of their culture. The “care of the common Home”, as promoted by the Catholic Church, is also a safeguard for these native cultures.
The commemoration of Indigenous Peoples’ Day on April 19 began in Brazil in 1943, the result of the proposal of the Inter-American Indian Congress that was held in Pátzcuaro, Mexico, in April 1940, which established a series of recommendations on the need to celebrate a day of this type.
This commemoration aims to defend, promote, and make known the enormous indigenous cultural diversity, the need for the permanence of these cultures, languages, and nationalities, and guarantee rights throughout the world.
It also invites reflection on the living conditions maintained by these people, the stereotypes and prejudices that persist in society, then why the need to demarcate and protect their lands, and reparation due to so much violence suffered.
1.7 million people living in Brazil belong to some indigenous ethnic group, which represents 0.83% of the country’s inhabitants. In the last 12 years, this population has almost doubled. At that time the Brazilian total population grew by 6.5%, and the indigenous population grew by 88.8%.
Just over half live in the Legal Amazon, which includes the coastal states of the Amazon River in the northern part of the country, including the state of Amazonas and the municipality of Pauini. Thus, 490,900 indigenous people live in the State of Amazonas, representing 12.45% of the total population. In the last census (2022) the municipality of Pauini had a total of 19,373 inhabitants.
